Takes place during the Half Blood Prince and the Deathly Hallows.
FUNAMBULIST
Wonder if I'm lost or found; (Hopelessly - Train)
She is here; mapping out his brain, defining his heart, plucking his eyes out and dissecting his brain cells.
"It's good to see you," he says. And it is, because they are back from Christmas holidays and she is running her eyes over the wound - Don't you understand? You are my son, you are a Malfoy. We must not fail the Dark Lord again! - peeking out from just over the collar of his robes. She analyzes it, catalogs it unabashedly because she is a Lovegood, but more than that she is Luna, and therefore she has nothing to prove to anyone.
He is a Malfoy, but more than that he is Draco, so he closes his eyes and lets her archive his flaws because this is what they do. She takes his burdens and makes them nothing.
At times he has no words for her because how could he possibly learn her world; understand Crumple-Horned Snorkacks and Nargles and Wrackspurts, and how could she possibly understand his?
But here she is. She is fluttering eyelashes and white-gold hair and she is utterly, entirely, thoroughly lost but she is here, which is more than Pansy and Blaise and Crabbe and Goyle combined.
The Forbidden Forest is forbidden, but not to them because he is the boy that Voldemort has chosen and she is the girl who sees dead people. He thinks the swing is a silly Muggle contraption but sits against the trunk of a tree and watches her anyway.
"It feels like flying," she says, and it is at times like these that he thinks she may be absolutely mental because she is a witch and witches have brooms. But then the sunlight catches the depth of gray hidden behind the initial silvery surface of her dreamy, saucer eyes and he sees that she understands like no one else and he begins to think maybe she is the sane one and everyone else is just mad.
Some of her hair is braided and some of it is loose and some of it is wavy and some of it is straight but all of it flies as she swings back and forth. And it takes his breath away.
She is startlingly pale and bright against the rich mahogany of the hardwood floor in one of Hogwart's lesser used ballrooms. She is fireflies in a dusty, barren desert; she is strange and different and she is like comic relief in his life because who else would skip soundlessly over dusty floors and take his hand and twirl him around and make him smile like she does?
She trips, catching one of Hogwart's trick floorboards with her feet, falling in slow motion before him. He doesn't think that anyone else could ever make tripping look so graceful.
Her hair splays all over the floor in the disarray that he's come to expect of it. Her robes () unravel slightly, spreading out in an orbit around her. She is smiling gleefully and even as Snape's instruction to meet him in his office nags at the back of Draco's mind, he sits down, counts her footprints etched in the layer of dust on the floor. He crosses his legs and watches her chest rise and fall in silent fits of laughter.
But he can hear people coming and he swoops into one of the backrooms and she is still on the floor, laughing as Potter and the Mudblood arrive. They don't look at their feet as they walk in. They drag their feet over Luna's footprints on the floor, over his footprints beside hers, scattering all evidence of their spontaneous dance.
Moments later she gets up and dances again, catching the hands of Potter and Granger and twirls them around, drawing them around the room and makes them smile and erases what's left of his footprints, leaving new ones: Luna's and Hermione's and Harry's.
Before he leaves, he waves his wand and makes all the dust in the room disappear. He feels strangely alone.
He needs her, and she is not here. He doesn't really expect her to be; her whimsical brain carries her to all areas of Hogwart's grounds and it was only once that he found her in Moaning Myrtle's abandoned bathroom.
But she skipped by him this morning and her silvery eyes skimmed over him without pause, when even Pansy has noticed his agitation and questioned him about it. There is a new bruise blossoming on his forearm - I made the Unbreakable Vow, you must stayed focused. You must not fail the Dark Lord! - and her damned whimsical brain has not decided to visit him since twenty-four days ago.
He doesn't - can't - expect anything of her, her head is lost, lost, lost and she was never his to begin with. (Could never be his; never ever ever)
"It's good to see you," he says. And this time, it is because Madame Pomfrey has healed him and his chest is no longer cut (Sectumsempra!) open but he remembers the pain and the Dark Lord is sitting - slitting open his throat - heavily on his chest.
In his mind he and Luna are falling but they (Longbottom, the female Weasley, Potter with his green, green eyes and is The Chosen One and oh, I am your friend, Luna!) are pulling her back, stealing her attention, thieving away her consideration, saving her, killing him.
Because Luna belongs in fairytales. She is pixie eyes and fairy lips and once upon a times, stories where Draco Malfoys don't get happy ever fucking afters like Harry Potters and Ronald Weasleys and Hermione Grangers do.
He is falling. They are falling falling falling away faster than the speed of light and sound and faster than magic and how could he have ever thought that she could possibly remain his to keep?
"If you had to choose between me and Potter - "
"Harry, of course - " she says. And her voice is dreamy and pleasant as if she isn't saying the other name, as if she isn't taking away all his happiness, isn't telling him that they could never, never, never ever in a hundred thousand years belong together.
She is braiding long strands of grass into her hair and normally he would have thought it looked quite pretty, except it is green like Potter's eyes and it is Potter who she believes in and it was Potter who took her to Slughorn's stupid Christmas party. And he pretends that he doesn't wish he was the one.
His own lies are the only ones he'd ever believe.
" - but, of course, I'd want to be on your side." Because she is Luna, and Luna does what is right, but he never hears this because his eardrums are pounding and he is stalking away and his not-green eyes are burning because even if Malfoys do not have feelings, especially ones concerning crazies like Luna Lovegood, Draco does.
But how could she possibly hear or see or feel him walking away or know that he does not hear her when her head is lost; utterly, entirely, thoroughly, lost and he has not figured out how to find her yet?
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